mcjtom

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/11/03/going-for-gold?_gl=1*mup04e*_ga*YW1wLXktTWMtYzlhOUlZc1RQM3VXTWxSZmc.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bronze-age-jewelry-uncovered-in-carrot-field-in-switzerland-180983109/

BBC News - Medieval 'love motto' gold ring found near Frinton
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-67090627

All that, was it under water or on wet sand at low tide?

On 8/24/2023 at 8:25 AM, midalake said:

If the target double rings OR breaks down in signal strength as the coil passes over it, then the fringe target is 100% iron. You cannot make a fringe nonferrous target double ring on an Equinox

Why would deep ferrous targets double beep?  I thought that I almost understood double and triple beeping thanks to Carl's explanations, but that's for the shallow targets of any type... 

How did they find the $10 bill? :⁠-⁠)

While these impromptu polls are too small to generalize, it is interesting to note that X Terra Pro seems to have fans that prefer it over Vanquish regardless of which box it is put in.  Perhaps the full tone audio, and more direct adjustability (including access to threshold and GB corrections) tipped the scales?

A follow-up question could be asked: with the obvious packaging advantages of the X Terra Pro removed from the equation, which of those two detectors actually detects 'better', in what circumstances?

There are 3 Modes, each with 2 Profiles.  Each comes with the default preset recovery speed, frequency, notching, and tone breaks.  All of these are adjustable within Mode/Profile.  The Beach mode's frequency is fixed at 8 kHz.

Does choosing a mode implies some other, non-adjustable, setting that comes with it?  Iron bias comes to mind.  In other words can I, by adjusting the default settings, make e.g. Field 2 work exactly like e.g. Park 1?

The second poll.  There is also Part 1 of it: 

A poll.  There is a second part to it here: 

7 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Buy an Equinox and test for yourself.

It's an interesting issue - any insight from you or other Equinox owners would be enlightening.

Cheers!  And the last question: did increasing the the recovery speed tend to make the grab-GB correction values a little lower or higher, in general and in your tested soils? 😁

On 8/26/2023 at 4:06 AM, Jeff McClendon said:

Just to be sure, I did a quick test with the Equinox and Legend. This was done on three different dirt samples that I keep for testing in 14" gold prospecting pans. One sample has moderate iron mineralization=4 bars on Deus 2 mineralization graph. One has moderate to high iron mineralization=6 bars on Deus 2 mineralization graph and one has very high mineralization=Deus 2 mineralization meter is maxed out. 

Jeff, your three soil samples: do they differ in the type of mineralization as well?  For a given recovery speed, do they grab-GB to (much) different values?

4 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

These are the type of questions that I do not like to answer since I have very different ground conditions and dirt samples from others

I understand, but was it totally random or the GB correlated somehow with the Recovery speed?   

I have a more general question as well: with the Nox GB correction scale going from -9 to 100, the proper value will depend on the type of mineralization?  Is the scale generally going from salt, to maghemite, to magnetite (lower GB values to higher GB values), or the other way around?  

p.s. Or maybe there is no such monotonic correlation between the Minelab MF GB correction scale and the mineralization type progression as traditionally defined?

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/6031-equinox-ground-balance/page/2/#comment-63454

p.s.s. If there is a trend, my uneducated guess would be that in general, increasing the recovery speed, moves the GB values on the ML scale a bit lower and vice versa to balance the same ground, in the same circumstances ...

1 hour ago, Jeff McClendon said:

and then changing the recovery speed even just one value like from 5 to 6 also resulted in a change in the ground balance number when I did a subsequent Ground Grab. The change in ground balance number was not big=two or three number difference

Which direction was the change?

I always thought that GB settings were independent of the Recovery Speed.  Is that true for the MF detectors, like the Equinox: i.e. if the recovery speed is adjusted, does the GB stay the same, or also needs to be changed as a result, everything else being equal?

On 7/18/2019 at 11:34 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

.

A

At the very end of the video they stamp detectors with serial numbers of the $2 bills that they presumably include with the machine.  How does this scheme help in counterfeit reduction?

Awesome explanation!  I think I understand why longitudinal nails have the strongest response at the edges (the induced currents will be swirling in the nail around the nail's axis) and the flat coin in the middle (for the same reason, the coin axis is vertical there just like the magnetic field lines).

Which bring me to a probably related question: with double-D coil, if a flat coin is close enough to the coil there are 3 beeps in one sweep.  When you stand up the same coin (the plane of the coin perpendicular to sweep direction now) it beeps twice, just like longitudinal nails. 

I can explain the latter with the nail theory above, but what happens in the first case with the flat coin?  The edge signals are weaker than the middle but still strong enough to be classified as a target?

p.s. Or the double flat coin beeps occur when the 'returning' magnetic field is perpendicular to the coin again, beyond the far side edges of the coil?  The field is weaker there than in the middle, but flat coin is a strong enough target to register even there if the coil is close enough?

On 12/25/2021 at 2:51 AM, Geotech said:

A lot of people test by placing the nails longitudenally but this becomes a test for a co-located composite response instead of a separation response. If you understand why nails give a double-beep when swept longitudenally then you will understand the mechanics of this test.

Does 'longitudinally' mean the nail length being oriented parallel to the direction of the sweep?  If yes, is the double-beep on a single nail because the speed of the sweep is low enough, and the recovery speed high enough, and the nail long enough to appear as a target in the two adjacent response recovery cycles?  If this is true, doesn't it indicate separation ability: with the swing an recovery speed fixed, there will be a nail short enough to beep as one target?

The Equinox coils will work on X Terra, but the Vanquish coils will not - is that correct?

How does X Terra behave in the wet salt with black sand for instance?  Somehow I thought that removing both types of ground signals at once was difficult to achieve in single frequency kits?

Just wonder: if you filter out all the 'extras' like the form factor, water resistance, vibrations, flashlights, etc., and do not go to deeply into SF vs. MF peculiarities - just focus on how practically helpful the low-cost machine is in finding nice things on the beach (and perhaps elsewhere too) - would you choose X Terra over say the Vanquish?

I also found this one as an alternative.  Would anybody know anything about it?

Am I correct that the Pulse Dive has no discrimination whatsoever, even between ferrous/non-ferrous targets?

Are there any other mini-snorkeling detectors that could compete with the Pulse Dive?

Cheers!

On 3/27/2023 at 5:19 AM, Chase Goldman said:

the operational shortcomings of Vanquish (fixed ground balance, does not retain user adjusted settings, no recovery speed adjustment, lack of an anti-EMI single frequency mode) become stark.

But are they real shortcomings, I wonder?

(semi-)Fixed ground balance doesn't seem to matter that much on beaches and notching out low negative ID numbers should mostly take care of ground noise in some other places.

It does retain the settings - both global as in sensitivity or volume and notching (and the current Mode's recovery speed) in the Custom Mode.

Each of the 3 modes brings a different recovery speed with it.  Coins is the fastest (probably equivalent to 5 on the Nox), then Jewelry (similar to 4 on the Nox, then Relic (perhaps 2 on the Nox).  When you save the current notching into the Custom mode, the current Mode's recovery speed will be saved with it.

I don't know much about the EMI, but haven't heard much about this being a problem with the Vanquish.  The trick of notching out the lowest negative ID numbers reportedly helps with the EMI as well.  Would switchable single frequencies be even better than the Vanquish auto-EMI?

In the end, I was thinking about and looking into new detectors - a harmless hobby just like with new cameras - but I figured that they wouldn't be much different, despite having more adjustability...

Cheers!